Smart and Sustainable Oskarshamn: Energy Management and urban system analysis

This master thesis aims at delivering specific recommendations to Oskarshamn “managers” on how to create a sustainable urban environment ready to live by 2030.

Background

Oskarshamn is a coastal city in Sweden with around 18 thousand inhabitants. It hosts three nuclear power facilities that in total cover about 10% of Sweden’s electrical supply. Furthermore, Oskarshamn hosts several industrial facilities such as Scania’s truck cabin or SAFT TOTAL Ni-Cd batteries. City of Oskarshamn has a vision to become a Smarter and more Sustainable city, a showcase for other cities with the similar conditions all over Europe. Within this master thesis project, KTH, City of Oskarshamn and Oskarshamn Energi have partnered to support this vision and highlight holistic smart city concepts and innovations in city of Oskarshamn.

Thesis objectives

This master thesis aims at delivering specific recommendations to Oskarshamn “managers” on how to create a sustainable urban environment ready to live by 2030. These recommendations (i.e. conclusions) must be supported with a complete urban energy system analysis for 20 years (2030-2050), including; well defined boundaries, a description of the energy, people, and materials flows within and across the boundaries, and quantitative simulations of energy supply and demand.

The term Smart or Sustainable can be applied to anything and everything, somewhat diminishing its meaning. For this call, we focus on two plus one key performance indicators (KPI) which must be used in the analysis. The two given KPI and corresponding goals are;

A “nearly” net zero energy
A “nearly” net-zero CO2 emission rate

The required KPIs are technical and environmental in nature, and given the social and economic aspects of the project, there will be conflicts with other KPI. There will be a third KPI defined by the student, based on the initial study of the key pain points within the city of Oskarshamn (e.g. improvement of the under-developed transport system for the city).

The thesis should target optimal energy and resource efficiency, ideally through the integration of new technologies (energy, mobility, ICT), development of new business models, and new methodologies of urban governance. Project proposals are expected to have both short and long term timelines with the final vision and transition fully executed by 2030.